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Aston Hall is 400 years old!

Aston Hall in Birmingham, the finest Stuart mansion in England is 400 years old in 2018. It is opposite another iconic #Birmingham place: Villa Park, the home of Birmingham’s biggest and best football club Aston Villa FC in Aston Park. Aston Hall was besieged during the English Civil War in 1643 as its owner Sir Thomas Holte was a staunch Royalist and supported King Charles the first. There is a hole in the bannister of the main staircase caused by a Parliamentarian cannon ball as the town of Birmingham supported Parliament against the King. There was a Battle of Birmingham in 1643 when Royalist Prince Rupert laid waste to the Deritend area of Birmingham. The West Midlands played a major part in the English Civil War with battles at Edge Hill in Oxfordshire and Worcester.

Aston Hall, published by T. Simpson and Darling & Thompson in 1798 [Ref. MS 3219/9/5/2/35] An inscription above the main doorway of the Hall records that it was started in 1618, occupied in 1631 and completed in 1635, Aston Hall was built by Sir Thomas Holte (1571-1654), whose family owned large estates in the parish of Aston and elsewhere, but particularly the three manors of Aston, Duddeston and Nechells.

Thomas Holte was wealthy and well connected. He studied at Oxford and the Inns of Court and paid James I for a Baronetcy in 1611. The family remained Royalists, which proved expensive of both life and property during the Civil War. In a volume of documents relating to Aston Hall and its owners, an anonymous description states that ‘The Ancient deeds and writings of the family being destroyed when Aston House was plundered in the time of the Rebellion in 1641…’…